Pushing Herself

Waking up and feeling the brisk autumn morning breeze of New York City was something Rose Coats looked forward to. 

Coats’ typical high school day started at 9 a.m. and ended at 4 p.m. But before heading to school, she would wake up early to train for cross country. Her early years of high school consisted of designing and executing workouts independently at Prospect Park, near her house in Brooklyn.  

Coats coached herself for much of her childhood as she attended Brooklyn Prospect Charter High School, which had no track or cross country teams. She explained the challenges city schools face regarding fielding athletic programs.  

“I went to school in New York City, so it’s not actually that uncommon for schools to not have very robust athletic programs just because we don’t have the space,” Coats said. “Like for a track team, what are you going to do? … There’s just not a lot.”

According to an article published by The Diamondback, she became a successful runner by participating in local charity runs to challenge herself and earn official times. She participated in a few postseason competitions, such as Nike Cross Regionals (NXR) and New Balance Nationals, where she would run against some of the best athletes.  

Danielle Siebert, Maryland’s Associate Head Coach for Middle Distance and Cross Country, says her competitive background was enough to showcase her potential at the collegiate level. However, she acknowledged the challenges of competing unattached. 

“Most of the races she would run, especially on the roads and stuff, she would know of like one other strong athlete that was around her,” Siebert said. “A lot of it was pushing herself, whereas when you're on a team in high school, you have the opportunity to go against the best people. You'd have to be a bit more self-motivated in the category that Rose was in.”

Coats’ love for running kept her focused, but she still searched for guidance. During her junior year of high school, she briefly received instruction from the head track coach at Susan E. Wagner High School in Staten Island. That lasted for roughly a month before she joined Prospect Park Youth Running Club and received instruction from its coach for the remainder of high school.   

“The first two years, I was making up my own workouts and doing them, and then I think in my junior year in high school, I was just not running fast,” Coats said. “I was like, I don't know what's going on.” 

Still, Coats rarely attended practices for either of the programs. Because her high school had a late start time, their practices were already underway by the time her school day finished. She estimates attending three practices in high school outside of the three weeks she spent running at another high school before transferring to Brooklyn Prospect.  

Coats’ coaches would simply send her the workouts planned for the day, and she would complete them. She believes the countless hours she clocked by herself with her training allowed her to develop a love for running and mental fortitude that many otherwise struggle to match.  

“I've always really liked running,” Coats said. “I had a really positive experience running in my elementary school. My coaches made me love it. Even if I didn't have a track team conveniently handed to me, I still wanted to run high school.”

Coats won the 4K at the 2019 USA Track and Field New York Junior Olympic Cross Country Championship and placed 10th in the 4K at the national competition. She also earned the USATF New York Youth Cross Country Athlete of the Year award the same year. Both feats were accomplished before she was coached. 

She later won the Youth Cross Country Athlete of the Year award for a second time in 2021 while competing for Prospect Park Youth Running Club. 

Because of her journey, Coats, now a sophomore at Maryland, experienced a unique recruiting process. She met her current teammate, Katie Altieri, during her brief time receiving instruction from Wagner’s coach. However, many of Coats’ interactions with Altieri, a student at Wagner, resulted from competitions in which they both participated. 

When it came time for Coats to choose her next steps, Altieri was already a Terp. Coats researched Maryland’s track and field and academic programs and concluded that they provided the best of both worlds. Instead of the other way around, she reached out to Maryland’s coaches, expressing her interest. 

“I would say in high school Katie was always kind of a role model for me,” Coats said. “I was just like, I want to run like Katie A, she's so fast. … I wanted to do the things that she did because I wanted to become as fast as her.”

Coats undoubtedly became fast. On Nov. 23, at the 2024 NCAA Championships, Coats placed 61st in the 6,000-meter race with a time of 20 minutes and 18.5 seconds. This was the third-best overall finish in program history and the best since Rosalind Taylor placed ninth in the 1988 National Championship, then a 5,000-meter race. 

Her performance was also the best of any Terp on a 6K National Championship course. She was just the sixth Terp in program history to qualify for the meet and the first since Emily Bracher in 2018.

Andrew Valmon, Maryland’s head track and field coach, and Siebert were in Madison, Wisconsin, to support Coats as she competed against over 250 competitors. Coats says the experience reminded her of high school, as she was the lone Terp to participate in the race.  

“She didn't have a team with her, which I guess she's used to a little bit from high school, but we tried to provide a really supportive environment to make sure her anxiety didn't get too high,” Siebert said. 

Coats’ NCAA Championship qualification was one of her many achievements during her sophomore cross country season. She was also an NCAA All-Region and a Big Ten Sportsmanship Award Recipient. 

The runner led the Terps in every race she participated in this year and twice set the program record for a 6K race. The latter feat includes her performance at the NCAA Mid-Atlantic Regional, where she clocked 19 minutes, 53.8 seconds to qualify for the NCAAs. That mark shaved over six seconds off her previous record, which she set at the Princeton Fall Classic. It also marked the first sub-20 minute 6K time in program history. 

“Honestly, in high school, I didn't even think I'd run in college,” Coats said. “There's just no way I could even dream of competing in college as a runner. … I definitely did not think four years ago that I would be at a Big Ten institution competing in NCAA’s and all these fun things.”

Outside of her sport, Coats is a chemical engineering major. According to her thermodynamics instructor, Peter Kofinas, it’s rare for student-athletes to pursue STEM degrees, but even rarer to pursue a degree in chemical engineering, which he considers the most difficult of the engineering sectors. 

In Kofinas’ class, Coats and her fellow students are tasked with a weekly quiz. Coats often misses class because of competition and has less time to prepare than her classmates. She sometimes takes the quizzes remotely in the early mornings before races, as she did before her record-breaking run at regionals to qualify for NCAAs. Still, Kofinas says Coats is doing very well in his class. 

“Being an athlete trains you to be very good at time management and being very disciplined as a person,” Kofinas said. “But even the athletes who do that, they don't always do well in academics, so it's rare that you have both.”  

Coats valued earning a challenging degree. However, she acknowledged the difficulties of balancing academics with her sport. In high school, she devoted her early morning to being an athlete and could go about the rest of her day as a student. In college, she has to balance the two throughout her day. 

“Rose is the definition of a student-athlete,” Siebert said. “Any downtime she had this past weekend, she was studying, she had her notes out. She was getting ready for her exams before Thanksgiving. I think she likes to do hard things. She picked a hard major, and running long distance is hard. I think that's kind of a theme with Rose.”

Over the summer, Coats conducted undergraduate research in the A. James Clark School of Engineering, where she helped test drugs that help women's reproductive diseases. She explained that in women’s reproductive health, people study extracellular vesicles (EVs) — cell-derived membrane-surrounded vesicles that carry bioactive molecules and deliver them to recipient cells. 

She continued explaining that the cells in the human body release EVs, and they can cause inflammation and other positives or negatives in the vaginal microbiome. Her research learned how to isolate EVs from cervical mucus. 

This semester, Coats is researching co-cultural bacterial growth. She explained her research involves growing bacteria with other bacteria and seeing how they kill each other. She then studies what percentages remain alive versus dead. 

“She works hard in everything,” Kofinas said. “She puts a goal in her life, whether it's athletics or academics or whatever other personal goals. I think she'll be extremely successful in her life, career, whatever she chooses to do in the future.”